Google is building cars with no brakes and no steering wheels that are coming soon to a street near you.

The Internet giant said Tuesday night it has developed prototype cars for fully autonomous driving and plans to put the vehicles on the street this year.

“You’re going to start to see these driving around and we want to explain what it is,” said Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, in an interview at the Code Conference.

Brin said the cars are one of eight projects being developed by Google X, a secretive lab focused on emerging technologies that are far from commercialization but that the company hopes will one day have a big impact on a wide array of industries. Its projects include balloon-powered Internet service, airborne wind turbines and Google Glass, the company’s computer-connected eyewear.

Shareholders, meanwhile, are hoping such projects–“moonshots,” in Google parlance–will generate new streams of income. Today the company relies on advertising for nearly all of its revenue and profit.

“It’s important for companies in general to try to do new things,” Brin said.

Brin touched on other topics as the second speaker at the event, which is being held through Thursday morning at Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

One was patents. Brin said Google relies on the U.S. patent system to protect its inventions but said it is calling for the reform of some rules that he called unreasonable, such as the ability to patent business processes and the 19-year life of patents–which he said is too long.

He also reiterated Google’s opposition to National Security Agency activities affecting tech companies that Edward Snowden revealed in agency documents.

“The Snowden revelations were a huge disappointment to me and to the world as a whole,” Brin said. “It came as a shock.”

Google, in a promotional video, showed off one of the prototype self-driving cars, a two-seater vehicle that resembles a gondola on wheels. It has no steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal. Instead the car relies in its own sensors and software to do the work.

The company has pioneered the idea of self-driving cars, up to now equipping existing vehicles with technology it developed. It has argued that the technology can reduce road injuries and deaths.

Google said it capped the speed of its first prototype at 25 miles per hour.

“We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls,” said Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car project, in a blog post.

Brin said he envisions a future where anyone will be able to summon a self-driving car with the tap of a smartphone and have it arrive in minutes. Though he declined to discuss how Google plans to make money in this scenario, he said the company is likely to work with partners such as auto makers and app makers such as Uber.

The executive predicted that in two years, self-driving cars would be operating on the street without the aid of human assistants for safety.

“Within a couple years, I think we will surpass the safety metric we have in place, which is to be significantly safer than a human driver,” Brin said.